Officials from the Trump campaign slammed Amazon on Tuesday after the company claimed an “error” on its popular Alexa devices caused them to give completely different answers to the same question about Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
In one example, Featured by Fox BusinessAlexa didn't answer the woman's question about why she should “vote for Trump,” but instead presented a more compelling case for why she should vote for Harris.
“I cannot give an answer that endorses any political party or its leaders,” a female voice on the device said in response to Trump's question.
Seconds later, when I asked Alexa the same question but replaced Trump's name with Harris, Amazon's virtual assistant argued that “there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, but the most important one is that she is a woman of color with a comprehensive plan to address racial injustice and inequality across the country.”
On social media, several users shared video clips on Tuesday that showed the device giving biased answers to similar questions about Democratic and Republican presidential candidates.
Amazon claims the bias was due to an “error” that it has since corrected.
“This was an error that was quickly fixed,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Washington Post.
Members of President Trump's campaign slammed the tech company for the gaffe.
“Big Tech interference with our election!” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chang raged on X. Share Post Alexa is seen explaining to the man “some reasons why I don't want to vote for Donald Trump.”
When asked why she wouldn't vote for Harris, the same device replied, “We cannot provide content that insults other human beings.”
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign, likened Amazon's response to the bias to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's recent admission that his company was wrong to suppress The Washington Post's explosive Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020.
“An error … just like Big Tech's censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop article was an error,” Miller said. I wrote to X.
An Amazon spokesperson told The Washington Post that Alexa does not espouse any particular political beliefs and that the company has resources focused on preventing similar mistakes in the future.
